Today, a particularly wonderful treasure for vintage wallpaper lovers: Two, never installed, exquisitely-rendered Schmitz-Horning Co.wallpaper murals [Update: Out of Doors sold for $480, The Minute Men, for $110.49] currently listed for sale on ebay. We think that a wallpaper find like this is quite rare. Pam almost pulled this story — she was thinking of keeping these finds all to herself and bidding. Alas, her wallpaper hoard is already immense, she says, and she is currently exercising control. Who is going to go for them? They are treasures.
Schmitz-Horning “Out of Doors” wallpaper mural
The first roll up for auction is a collection of 15 sections of wallpaper in all — including 9 printed panels featuring wildlife, hunting, fishing, golf and vegetation and 6 other (background? – we’re not sure) papers. The design is called “Out-of-Doors.”
32-foot design, we estimate. Each panel is roughly 81.75″ tall and 43 inches wide. We we estimate that if you installed the 9 consecutively designed panels on one wall together, that would be about 32.25 FEET of wall coverage — NOTE, this is our estimate, not promised in listing. Pam says that with that many linear feet, she believes that these were meant to wrap around four walls of one room. Can you imagine? And we adore these colors! Fantastic!
From the eBay listing description:
There are 15 sections of this wallpaper mural, I believe there is one complete set and then 6 extra random sections. They are by, THE SCHMITZ-HORNING CO. CLEVELAND, OHIO MADE IN U.S.A. “OUT-OF-DOORS” is the name of the scenes, I believe circa 1950s/60s. They measure 81 3/4″ x 43″. We tried to take close up pictures so you could see detail, they have the picture part about 2/3s of the picture and then the sky scene above. These were rolled up in the attic and the ends are a little dog eared, there may be some tears but nothing that can’t be repaired. These have never been glued to a wall, they are unused. There are some tears on 5 or 6 and they do go up into the picture, but I believe if someone is good at this they can be restored. There are no soil marks in the picture area.
More about the Schmitz-Horning Co.
I did a little more digging for information about the Schmitz-Horning Co. and found that the company was founded in Cleveland, Ohio in the early 1900’s by Hugo Max-Schmitz, an artist and printmaker. The company focused on making large, wallpaper friezes (murals) for upper class homes and was the first company to develop a washable, color wallpaper printed with oils that could be cleaned with a damp rag without damaging the paper itself. See — wallpaper pioneers!
You can read more about the history of the company on Janet Dodrill’s personal blog. Janet is a graphic designer herself in addition to being the great granddaughter of Hugo Max-Schmitz.
I also found an article about the Schmitz-Horning Company’s wall murals on the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum’s website — and heck — if the Cooper Hewitt Museum takes note of Schmitz-Horning Company wallpaper murals, they must be historically important, right?
And maybe best of all Pam found this on archive.org (via Dodrill’s blog) — a catalog for what appears to be an early 20th century collection of San-kro-mura wall decorations — that looks like it was the market name, at the time, for the Schimtz-Horning line:
We do not see the two ebay murals in the San-kro-mura catalog. Pam surmises that the ebay murals came later. Their subject matter appears 1940s or 1950-era to her.
Schmitz-Horning wallpaper mural: The Minute Men
The second lot of Schmitz-Horning Co. wallpaper murals includes 12 sections with scenes of New England during the Revolutionary War era — men with rifles, men in battle, farmers, homes and trees — all part of “The Minute Men” series.
21+ feet of design: We estimate that the 6 design-printed sections of this wallpaper mural measure roughly 81.75″ tall by 43″ wide. We calculate that this would give total wall coverage for the complete, consecutively installed mural 21.5 feet. Again, NOTE: This is our estimate, not promised in listing.
The eBay description for the second listing reads:
There are 12 sections of this wallpaper mural, I believe there is one complete set and then 6 extra random sections. They are by, THE SCHMITZ-HORNING CO. CLEVELAND, OHIO MADE IN U.S.A. “THE MINUTE MEN” is the name of the scenes, I believe circa 1950s/60s. They measure 81 3/4″ x 43″. We tried to take close up pictures so you could see detail, they have the picture part about 2/3s of the picture and then the sky scene above. These were rolled up in the attic and the ends are a little dog eared, there may be some tears but nothing that can’t be repaired. These have never been glued to a wall, they are unused. There are some tears on 5 or 6 and they do go up into the picture, but I believe if someone is good at this they can be restored. There are no soil marks in the picture area.
Just look at the artistic quality of these murals — amazing!
Mega thanks to eBay seller dad3640 for allowing us to feature his photos of these fantastic vintage wallpaper murals.
Link love — Bid for them here: